Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (41 page)

“
I don’t know. It could
be.”

“
Your Honor, I’ve taken the
liberty of asking the bailiff to bring up a video monitor from
downstairs. It’s in the corridor and can be brought in now. At this
time, I’d ask that this videotape be marked for identification, and
then I’d like to ask Mrs. Cimarron some questions about its
contents.”

The judge glanced toward the prosecution
table. “Counsel?”

“
We object, of course.
We’ve had no notice.”

“
It’s impeachment
material,” I responded, “and no notice is required.”

At the word “impeachment,” I thought I saw
Jo Jo flinch. The judge overruled the objection, the clerk tagged
the tape, and the bailiff wheeled in the monitor.

“
Now, Mrs. Cimarron. I’ve
cued the tape to what we might call Round Two. Mr. Cimarron and I
are struggling on the ground floor. You recall that?”

McBain was on his feet again. “Your Honor,
we request that the tape start at the beginning so that the jury
gets the full picture.”

“
Denied. You can do it on
redirect. I don’t like to fuss with lawyers on cross.”

I was starting to like Judge Witherspoon. He
came from the diminishing number of judges who let lawyers try
their cases.

“
Mrs. Cimarron, just sit
back a moment,” I told her gently. “Let’s close our eyes and
listen.”

Jo Jo’s eyes remained open. Wide open.

The television flicked on with the sight of
out-of-focus straw. The first sound was the whinny of a horse, then
hoof beats.

“
Simmy! Simmy, he raped me!
Are you going to let him go?”

I kind of liked that as an opening line. On
direct examination, she never mentioned goading him. She had said
she tried to stop us from fighting. Out of little inconsistencies
does cross-examination grow.

The sound of the bullwhip, a whistle and
crack of the leather sharp as a bee sting. The sound of feet
shuffling again, close to the microphone, my hand scraping the
wall, coming off with the bridle and bit, smashing Cimarron in the
mouth, then a gasp and gagging—mine—as he kicked me in the gut.

The jurors strained to listen. If you hadn’t
been there, you couldn’t tell who was doing what to whom. That’s
okay. At the end, I hoped, it would all be clear. For now, so
strange, listening to my own labored breathing, remembering the
pain and the fear.

“
Don’t move, lawyer, or
I’ll nail you to the barn wall.”

The words stabbed me, even now, recalling
the terror.

I heard myself calling out to Jo Jo to tell
him the truth. Again, she accused me of raping her and egged him
on.

I heard the first
whomp
, the nail hitting
at my feet. Another that buried itself in the wall. The
click
of the empty
gun.

“
Damn. Josefina, there’s a
full clip over by the sawhorse.”

I stopped the tape. “Let’s pause here for a
moment. Did you reload the stud gun?”

She thought about it before answering.
Surely, she knew there would be more sounds of the nails thunking
into wood. “Yes, I believe I did.”

“
Once or more than
once.”

“
Just once.”

“
With a clip of ten
bullets? I believe Mr. Russo testified each clip had ten
,27-caliber bullets.”

“
Yes, that’s
right.”

“
And after you reloaded,
Mr. Cimarron continued to fire nails at me, didn’t he?”

“
Not at you, near you. He
just wanted to frighten you, to teach you a lesson. You wanted to
kill him, and you did.”

“
How did I manage to get
the stud gun away from him?”

She didn’t want to answer. Get her off the
script, she isn’t ready. “It’s all so confusing now, and listening
to this, hearing his voice, it’s all so very upsetting.” Tears
welled in her eyes.

“
Your Honor,” McBain said.
“It might be a propitious time for a recess.”

“
No, Your Honor! It’s a
propitious time for the prosecutor to coach the
witness.”

McBain puffed out his chest. “I resent that,
Mr. Lassiter. We don’t insult lawyers like that in Pitkin
County.”

“
In Miami,” I told him,
“that’d be considered a compliment.”

“
All right, you two, that’s
enough.” Judge Witherspoon was pointing at me and glaring at
McBain, an evenhanded way of getting order, sort of like throwing a
flag for unsportsmanlike conduct on both teams. “I don’t like to
interrupt the flow of a lawyer’s cross-examination. Let’s
proceed.”

“
Now, Mrs. Cimarron, so
that the jury is clear on this issue, you only loaded one clip into
the stud gun?”

“
Yes, I just said
that.”

“
Did Mr. Cimarron ever
reload?”

“
No.”

“
Did I?”

“
No.”

“
Okay, I’m going to start
the tape again, and this time, let’s count. Each time we hear a
nail shot, I’m going to keep track right here.” I positioned a
blackboard in front of the jury, grabbed a piece of chalk, and
nodded to Patterson, who hit the play button.

“
Bang,” said the voice of
Kit Carson Cimarron. The jury looked puzzled, but I remembered his
taunt, pretending to shoot me while pointing at my
heart.

Whomp
, a pause, and whomp again. I put two vertical lines on the
chalkboard, and on the tape, the sound of the corn crashing onto
me. A moment passed. Indistinguishable sounds. I heard myself
grunt. Cimarron had dragged me out of the corncrib and was sitting
on my chest. He jammed the stud gun along my neck, and I felt a
chill now, remembering . . .

Whomp. A nail pinned my sweatshirt to the
floor.

“
Maybe the lawyer needs a
haircut.” Another shot skimming my head. Another I remembered just
below my crotch, and I winced now with the sound of it. Now, I had
four vertical lines and a diagonal one crossing them.

Another shot by my kneecap, one by my foot,
one alongside each temple, as he outlined me, like the silhouette
of a body at a homicide scene. Then one last nail between the
fingers of my hand. Five more lines. I stopped the tape.

“
How many shots is
that?”

“
I counted ten.”

“
Ah, our numbers coincide.
I guess the gun is out of bullets, is it not?”

She knew where I was going. “You must have
reloaded.”

“
I
must have? A moment ago, you said I didn’t. You told this
jury that no one reloaded.”

“
I must have been
wrong.”

“
Let’s see what else you
were wrong about. Now who was shooting at whom in the little
exchange we just heard?”

Again, she sensed where this would lead.
“Simmy was shooting, but you must have gotten the gun away
and...”

“
And what?”

“
I don’t
remember.”

“
Well, maybe this will
refresh your recollection.”

I nodded to Patterson who started the
tape.

Cimarron called out to Jo Jo to bring the
branding iron.

“
Simmy, why not just finish
it?” she said, and in the jury box, no one moved.

Cimarron told her he wanted me to suffer,
“but I’ve never killed a man, and I won’t start now.”

“
If he lives and starts
talking,” she said, “it’ll just complicate things. Keep it clean
and simple.”

There was the sound of grunting and great,
husky breaths. My hand had found the stud gun, and we were
grappling for it. I remembered lying there on my back, his weight
pinning me down, my raising the gun.

Click.

Again I stopped the tape.

“
What was that?”

“
You tried to shoot
him.”

“
Right. But there were no
bullets. So what happened?”

“
As I said before, you must
have reloaded, then shot him.”

“
Now, on direct exam, you
testified that immediately prior to firing the fatal shot, I was
fighting with Mr. Cimarron?”

“
Yes.”

“
We were both on the floor,
with Mr. Cimarron pinning me down?”

“
Yes.”

“
So, how did I manage to
shoot Mr. Cimarron? Did I ask him to get off me and wait a moment
while I walked to the sawhorse, calmly found a new clip, inserted
it, found another nail, loaded it, then asked Mr. Cimarron to
please put his ear up to the muzzle so I could shoot him at
point-blank range?”

“
I don’t know. I was under
great stress and frightened. I just know you shot him.”

“
Was I conscious at the
time I allegedly shot him?”

“
Of course.”

“
And did Mr. Cimarron
strike me after he was hit?”

Her eyes darted from me to the jury. “Of
course not. He died instantly.”

“
You heard the testimony of
Sheriff’s Deputy Dobson that I was unconscious when he
arrived.”

“
Yes.”

“
What rendered me
unconscious
after
I supposedly shot Mr. Cimarron?”

No answer.

“
Isn’t it true, Mrs.
Cimarron, that the
click
we heard on the tape came when your husband and I
were struggling for control of the stud gun, and immediately
thereafter, he hit me with such force that my head bounced off the
barn floor, knocking me unconscious?”

“
No. You shot him before
you passed out.”

“
How! With an empty
gun?”

“
I don’t know how. I can’t
be expected to remember every detail.” She turned to the jury. “You
can’t know what it was like, seeing your husband butchered. You
can’t get everything straight.”

“
Well, let’s see if we can
re-create what it was like.” I walked to the defense table and
whispered a request to Patterson. In the back row of the
spectators’ gallery, I saw Detective Racklin. Patterson got up and
headed into the corridor, returning a moment later with the bailiff
and two life-size dummies. I placed one on its back and struggled
with the other to get it sitting on the first one’s
chest.

“
Now, Mrs. Cimarron, do
these dummies accurately represent the situation with your husband
pinning me to the floor?”

“
Yes, I
suppose.”

I got the stud gun from the evidence table
and removed the clip. Then I put in on the floor next to the two
dummies.

“
And your testimony is that
somehow, from that position, I put a nail through his ear, though
you don’t recall my reloading the stud gun?”

“
It happened. You shot him.
Only you know how.”

“
Now where were you
standing in relation to the two of us?”

She pointed to my left.

“
Please answer audibly,”
the judge told her, his voice seeming to startle her.

“
Close, maybe five yards
away.”

I stepped back several steps. “Here?”

“
Yes.”

“
And where was the sawhorse
with the clips of bullets and the nails?”

She pointed to the end of the clerk’s table.
One step from where I stood.

It would work. I knew it now. The timing was
perfect.

I picked up a nail and a plastic clip from
the evidence table and placed them where she indicated. “Okay,
let’s back up the tape a few seconds, start it again and see what
happens. And Mrs. Cimarron, if you’ll bear with me, for purpose of
this demonstration, please pretend I’m you.” The jurors’ eyes never
left me. They expected magic, and I intended to deliver. I nodded
to Patterson who hit the rewind button, then the play.

Again Jo Jo told Cimarron
to keep it clean and simple. Again the sound of our grappling, then
the click and the clunk of my head against the floor.
One-thousand-one
. I
picked up the wooden plank from the evidence table,
one-thousand-two
, came up
from behind the Cimarron dummy and swung at the back of its
head.

Thud
. The plank hit home and the dummy toppled forward onto the
Lassiter dummy. A millisecond later on the tape,
one-thousand-three, thud.

Then a grunt that had to be from Cimarron on
tape, because the dummy didn’t say a word.

One-thousand-four.

I dropped the plank, took
two steps to the clerk’s table,
one-thousand-five
, picked up the clip
and a nail,
one-thousand-six
, walked back to the
dummies, picked up the stud gun,
one-thousand-seven
, calmly inserted
the clip and the nail.

One-thousand-eight.

The Cimarron dummy’s head was leaning, chin
down, on the Lassiter dummy’s chest. I leaned over and jammed the
muzzle of the stud gun into its ear.

One-thousand-nine.
I pulled the trigger.

Whomp
. The sound shuddered through the courtroom.

Whomp
. More muffled perhaps, but the same sound on
tape.

The nail tore through the dummy’s head,
traveled on an upward path, and embedded in the wall of the
courtroom just below a photograph of an 1890s judge with full chin
whiskers.